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Interview: Lauren Baratz-Logsted
Topics: Lauren Baratz-Logsted, Noveltown, Author, literature, Bakersfield, Belardes, Bakotopia
Posted by thenovelist Thu May 10, 2007 13:36:53 PDT
Viewed 327 times
0 responses 0 comments Lauren Baratz-Logsted. Hers isn’t an easy name to learn or write. Call me a simpleton. Yet, if you said her name these days, I’d know exactly whom you were talking about. She’s a regular commenter on LitPark, a regular on myspace (She’s everywhere like a freakin’ ghost ninja), and a regular in the Noveltown Review with an article in the inaugural issue and a forthcoming article in our upcoming racier edition.

Her article, "The Working Writer: What Kind Of Writer Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up?" is meant to help out writers who need the guidance to get successful. I know I need it. Who doesn’t need encouragement? I probably look forward to her next article more than anybody. On a personal level I’ve been through every emotion a novelist must face in the path of a hopeful literary career. I told writer Samantha Dunn recently, “Noveltown is built out of the lint of our pockets.” And so are most writing careers. It’s tough work. People like Lauren help us through the process of acceptance and understanding what it’s all about.

It’s what you learn from people that matters. And some writers, well, they just ooze with wisdom. That’s Lauren Baratz-Logsted. I’m in dire need of picking her brain, cloning her brain cells, and injecting them into my own. I could use some of her writing prowess, her determination to succeed, and I’m guessing here, but some of her skills at being a perfectionist.

I recently finished Lauren’s book, Vertigo. It's been getting mostly raves with a few dissenters on Amazon. Love or hate Vertigo, it’s masterfully written, a complete blend of historical fiction with erotic suspense. It takes skill to mimic culture and language, knowledge to provide historical detail, and ingenuity to delve such in a path of formulaic writing. Vertigo’s prim and proper language and spellbinding characterization of a corrupt novelist from yesteryear and his curious unsatisfied wife makes for a daring psychological journey into literary formula and storytelling.

Literary formulas aren’t bad. When done well there are purposeful twists within. They lead your mind down roads where the reader naturally stereotypes the outcome. If done well, as in Vertigo, then such works have the ability to set up and shock the reader’s own expectations of where a story is headed. Sure, there’s a formula in Vertigo. And Baratz-Logsted purposely strays. That’s a good formula story. Your mind goes one way, the story goes another. The reader gets fooled and thus should have a better time reading. Yet it’s still locked in a genre—the water rises along a yardstick of thought, drops, pushes back up in a swell of conflict, all within the range of the formula.

I won’t go on and on. Rather I’ll allow Lauren Baratz-Logsted to speak for herself.

Here’s Baratz-Logsted's interview with Noveltown:

Noveltown: How do you get away with writing both Victorian era fiction with erotic overtones and young adult novels? Aren’t you going to make granny librarians and young mothers angry at you?

Baratz-Logsted: To answer the first question, I get away with it simply by believing that if a writer is willing to work hard, and I am, she deserves to get the opportunity to stretch her writing muscles all over the place; that, and no one has asked me recently to change my name so they can “brand” me as a certain type of writer. As for the second question, I’ve been mostly lucky with granny librarians – oh, and by the way, as a former sort-of librarian, on behalf of all librarians everywhere may I slap you for that – and young mothers. I’ve also been very lucky with men, who mostly aren’t threatened by my books in the way some women are. I’ve had less success with ultra-conservatives, but you can’t please everyone and I perversely hope I never write the book that does. Honestly, if I don’t ruffle at least a few people, I’m probably not doing my job.

(Read the full article)
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